Achieving an Adequate Mental Stability and Accessible Healthcare Systems Yielding Significant Improvements in Worldwide Quality of Life
By Kyoji Yamamoto, GRC 2024 Essay Competition Top 30
Preventative healthcare, also known as prophylaxis, which decreases the risk of life threatening conditions provides a direct correlation between Quality of Life (QOL) in each individual (National Library of Medicine). However, QOL differs between countries worldwide due to several factors. It could be argued that achieving adequate mental stability and gaining accessibility to healthcare systems can be considered significant factors that improve QOL worldwide.
Prophylaxis is defined as an action or a treatment given in order to prevent life-threatening situations. Examples of prophylaxis can be vaccinations and temporal doctor appointments. However, prophylaxis cannot be obtained due to a lack of hospital beds in regions of Asia, Africa, and South America, the middle to low income countries as well as shown in the Image 1 below (Our World in Data). This directly correlates to the accessibility of healthcare in certain regions, because lacking hospital beds, gives more competition between patients who can be treated. As the competition becomes higher, the number of patients with life-threatening conditions increases and creates a longer queue to access a healthcare system. Moreover, research has proven that health issues or injuries correspond with diminishing QOL (Minner Vines Injury Lawyers). To overcome this situation, it is necessary for countries that are economically stable to fund in the forms of charity, to increase hospital beds which as a result, gains more accessibility of healthcare systems for the local citizens. Although charities can increase quantities of hospital beds, it does not overcome the situation completely. It is necessary for additional healthcare teams such as NGOs to collaborate in order to achieve or provide quality healthcare. NGOs have programs that provide healthcare to individuals living in catastrophic situations such as refugees, such as Doctors Without Borders, which provides a good quality of healthcare to refugees, which contributes to an increase in QOL. However, some people consider the work done by NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders, to be extremely risky (Quora). Starting programs that support or provide healthcare to people having difficulties in accessing healthcare in regions that are not undergoing catastrophic conditions, would lead to more accessibility to healthcare and gain motivation to work or register as a staff in NGOs for volunteer work. Consequently, it is unnecessary for considerations in terms of cost, due to its applicable method and enables to improve the QOL worldwide.
Image 1: Number of hospital beds per 1000 people from 1960 to 2018 in different countries and regions (Our World in Data).
Low QOL is the result of intense physical and mental instability. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adverse childhood experiences such as child abuse and sexual assault lead to triggering mental disorders via trauma (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Additionally, image 2 confirms the relationship between child abuse or experienced violence and GDP per capita of the country. The statistics explains that low GDP countries tends to have more incidences related to child abuse and violence. Therefore it is predictable that children in environments aforementioned have a severe mental instability. Since organizations such as Doctor Without Borders have coverage for those regions, preparing camps or tents for mental therapy can help to improve the QOL (McLean). Therapy for mental instability is necessary, because long term mental disorder leads to physical disease, and moreover, it affects the daily life. Specifically, mental instability leads to physical health disorders such as psoriasis, which gives rashes and itches on skin due to stress. Besides, mental instability influences social interactions, productivity and day-to-day decision making (Alyssa). Especially negative childhood experiences, such as abuse and neglect tends to increase the risk of mental illness (Healthdirect). In order to overcome mental instabilities, the most applicable method is considered as the use of colors (Mental Health America). Studies have proven that warm colors such as red, yellow and orange initiates joy and happiness where cool colors such as blue, green and purple gives calmness to a person. By adapting methods that utilizes the effect of colors, it provides certain effects to unstable mentality which can be predictable in advancement of mentality. Moreover, a study confirms good communicators are people who have high interaction skills such as eye contact and gestures. This is important because it shows the empathy between the therapist and the patient, even if the therapist is in the situation where language barriers are present between the patients (Slew).
Image 2: The relationship identifying children experiencing violence and GDP of the country (Our World in Data).
To sum up, improving the accessibility provides the native people to gain healthcare treatment, and it could be achieved with the help of charity from wealthy or economically stable countries, as well as providing medicine programmes from NGOs to accomplish increasing the accessibility of the healthcare system in economically unstable countries. It also has the added benefit of giving attention to the catastrophic parts of the world. Also, achieving adequate mental stability for populations in catastrophic conditions or living in economically undeveloped countries, by the use of colours initiates the population to become more productive and enables them to make appropriate decision making. Since these methods do not require any considerations in terms of cost, and it is based on applicable methods, it increases the affordability of healthcare systems for populations in low economically developed countries, as well as improvements of the QOL worldwide, by achieving a close QOL value as well as more economically developed countries.
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